Part 1 (1/2)

The Unspeakable Gentleman

by John P Marquand

I

I have seen the improbable turn true too often not to have it disturb me

Suppose these memoirs still exist when the French royalist plot of 1805 and otten I cannot help but remember it is a restless land across the water But surely people will continue to recollect Surely these few pages, written with the sole purpose of explaining enerate into anything so pitifully fanciful as the story of a man who tried his best to be a bad exaood one

It was my Uncle Jason ith me when I learned of my father's return to America I still reood-natured face, as I read my father's letter There was anxiety written there as he watched htful otten the affairs of his counting house, and the inventory of goods from France, which a clerk had placed before him Of late he had taken in me an unaccusto

”So he is here,” said my Uncle Jason

”He is just arrived,” I answered

”I had heard of it,” he rehtfully ”And you will see him, Henry?”

”Yes,” I replied, ”since she asked me to”

”She had asked you? Your mother? You did not tell me that” His voice had been sharp and reproachful, and then he had sighed ”After all,” he went on ently, ”he is your father, and you must respect him as such, Henry, hard as it is to do so I am sorry, almost, that he and I have quarreled, for in one far, except for his failing God knows I did ain at the small success of his efforts and returned to the papers that lay before hirossing of late, and gave him little leisure

”Do not be too hard on him, Henry,” he said, as I departed

It was ten years since I had seenthe rest of a lifetireat house with lawns that ran down to the river where our shi+ps pulled at their ether--I for school, and one I was just beginning to see the starker outlines of a world that has shaken off the shadows of youth when I saw hi early in autu of the surf on the beach seeed my horse from the neat, quiet streets of the town up the rutted lane that led to the Shelton house The tang of the salt marshes was in the wind, and a touch of frost over thein fro off the tall elh the clear October sunlight

And yet, in spite of the wind and the sea and the clean light of the forenoon, there was a sadness about the place, and an undercurrent of uneasy silence that the rustling of the leaves and the noise of the surf only seemed to accentuate It was like the silence that falls about a table when the guests have left it, and the chairs are e dim It was the silence that comes over all places where there should be people, and yet where no one coland was more wild and disordered than when I had seen it last The weeds had choked the forrew before the front door And the house--I had often pictured that house in reat arched doorway, its sambrel roof Once it had seemed to me a massive and majestic structure Now those ten years hadthat overlooked the harbor le of dead and living vines The paint was chipping froes Here and there a shutter had broken loose and was sagging on rusted hinges Houses are apt to follow the direction their owners take

I kneas being watched, though I cannot tell how I knew it Yet I saw nothing until I was nearly at our door I rereen stain fro, when my horse snorted and stopped dead in his tracks Froranite stone which served as a door-step so in the sun, and then as I looked s, a face of light ro blood It was Brutus, my father's half-caste servant

Dark and saturnine as ever, he glided out into the path in front ofback into the sash around his waist, moved toward me, and took my horse's head His teeth shone when I spoke to hi There was a touch of Indian in his blood that lad to see ently froreat forrin, his eyes appraising and friendly And then I noticed for the first time the livid welt of a cut across his cheek

Brutus read lance, but he only shook his head in answer

”What do you hly

”Always ,” said Brutus ”Monsieur --you understan'?”

”No,” I said, ”I don't understand”

His grasp on o ho happen Monsieur very angry So bad--you understan'?”